Not waiting to hear an answer to this speech, I arose and took my hat, and pressing Belton's hand cordially as I asked him to dinner for that day, I hurried out of the room. Not, however, without his having time to whisper to me,-- "That affair is all arranged,--have no further uneasiness on the subject." I was in the street in the midst of the moving, bustling population, with all the life, din, and turmoil of a great city around me, and yet I stood confounded and overwhelmed by what I had just witnessed. "And this," said I, at last, "is the way the business of the world goes on,--robbery, cheating, intimidation, and overreaching are the politenesses men reciprocate with each other!" Ah, Tom, with what scanty justice we regard our poor hard-working, half-starved, and ragged people, when men of rank, station, and refinement are such culprits as this! Nor could I help confessing that if I had passed my life at home, in my own country, such an instance as I had just seen had, in all likelihood, never occurred to me. The truth is that there is a simplicity in the life of poor countries that almost excludes such a craft as that of a swindler. Society must be a complex and intricate machinery where _they_ are to thrive. There must be all the thousand requirements that are begotten of a pampered and luxurious civilization, and all the faults and frailties that grow out of these. Your well-bred scoundrel trades upon the follies, the weaknesses, the foibles, rather than the vices of the world, and his richest harvest lies amongst those who have ambitions above their station, and pretensions unsuited to their property,--in one word, to the "Dodds of this world, whether they issue from Tipperary or Yorkshire, whether their tongue betray the Celt or the Saxon!" I grew very moral on this theme as I walked along, and actually found myself at my own door before I knew where I was. I discovered that Morris and his mother had been visiting Mrs. D. in my absence, and that the interview had passed off satisfactorily Cary's bright and cheery looks sufficiently assured me. Perhaps she was "not i' the vein," or perhaps she was awed by the presence of real wealth and fortune, but I was glad to find that Mrs. D. scarcely more than alluded to the splendors of Dodsborough; nor did she bring in the M'Carthys more than four times during their stay. This is encouraging, Tom; and who knows but in time we may be able to "lay this family," and live without the terrors of their resurrection! The Morrises are to dine with us, and I only trust that we shall not give them a "taste of our quality" in high living, for I have just caught sight of a fellow with a white cap going into Mrs. D.'s dressing-room, and the preparations are evidently considerable. Here 's Mary Anne saying she has something of consequence to impart to me, and so, for the present, farewell.